Pink Floyd's sublime music of hope and despair, touches all nationalities and is as meaningful today as it was when conceived. From origins in the early Sixties, where everything is up in the air, not least love, drugs and sex. A group of talented teenagers from academic backgrounds in Cambridge — Roger 'Syd' Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour — are all keen guitarists and among many who move to London, keen to discover more of this new world and express themselves in it. Mainly in further education — studying the arts, architecture, music — they mix with like-minded incomers in the big city.
In 1965, Barrett and Waters meet an experimental percussionist and an extraordinarily gifted keyboards-player — Nick Mason and Rick Wright respectively. The result is Pink Floyd, which more than 40 years later has moved from massive to almost mythic standing.
There have been awards and honours along the way: induction into both the US and UK Rock 'n' Roll Halls of Fame; Sweden's Polar Music Prize in 2008 for their 'monumental contribution over the decades to the fusion of art and music in the development of popular culture'. And in 2010, The Royal Mail used Division Bell visuals on their stamps, also creating a unique sheet using only the Floyd's imagery.
This exhibition includes rare and unseen images from the Rockarchive collection including photos of reclusive founder Syd Barrett by Mick Rock, artwork from Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis studio, as well as candid images by Jill Furmanovsky, who has opened up her largely unseen archive to cast light on the dynamics in the band as they recorded Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road and toured Dark Side of the Moon in the UK in the mid-70's.
